Dateline: KALAMAZOO—In the wake of the school shooting in Florida, in which a young male killed 17 of his former fellow students, a team of researchers at the Technocracy Institute in Michigan explains the impossibility of sensible gun regulation in the United States… by citing its study which indicates that most American parents love guns more than their children.
The study began by comparing the speed at which randomly selected parents attempted to save their child or their gun from harm.
Drawn from both liberal and conservative states, each subject was positioned at one end of a concrete room. At the other end was his or her child. Suddenly, what appeared to be a metal light fixture directly above the child squeaked, shook, and began to fall. The subject then raced to save his or her child, but the child was in no real danger because the light fixture was painted Styrofoam.
The scientists recorded the time it took for the subject to reach the child, and compared it to the time it took for the subject to reach his or her gun which was also placed in apparent danger. Instead of being threatened by a fake light fixture, an unrelated child with a plastic hammer pulverized the floor as he or she walked towards the gun. Loud, realistic sounds of hammer smashing into concrete were piped in from hidden speakers to preserve the illusion that the child was about to destroy the subject’s gun. Again, the subject raced towards his prized possession.
In 936 out of 1000 tests, the subject ran slightly faster to rescue his or her weapon than to protect his or her child.
In a variation of the experiment, the subject’s child was strapped to the middle of the floor in a narrow hallway, and the gun was positioned at the opposite end from the subject so that the child was between the two. What appeared to be a flamethrower was pointed at the gun, and what looked like flames inched closer and closer before engulfing the firearm. The flames, however, weren’t real, so the gun was in no danger.
The question, though, was whether the subject would trample his or her child or reach into apparent flames to rescue the weapon. Again, a strong majority of subjects chose to do so: 803 out of 1000 American adults stepped on their child in a mad dash to their gun, as well as risking serious burns to retrieve it from the apparent flames.
In the reverse situation, however, with the subject’s gun strapped to the floor and the child in apparent danger of being scorched alive, most subjects were more reticent. Over two thirds of the American parents stepped carefully over or around their gun rather than risk damaging the expensive hardware, and less than a quarter of the subjects reached into the bogus flames to save their child. Those that ran to their child but didn’t reach in only yelled for help. One tenth of the subjects unstrapped their fire arm, turned around and left their child to burn without even attempting to save their offspring.
The researchers concluded that most Americans care more about guns than their children, and that this is the basis of American gun culture which empowers the National Rifle Association in American politics and prevents any legislation that threatens Americans’ right to own guns.
“Whenever there’s another school shooting in America,” said the lead researcher, “the same tired script about thoughts and prayers is trotted out, and there’s never real momentum behind any attempt to restrict Americans’ access to firearms, even though most developed countries have much fewer shootings because they have tighter control over guns. We think the reason is that most American parents would rather see their children die in a school shooting than to see the government take away their gun.
“Americans love their guns even more than they love their children. So the talk of gun control laws here is futile. The next time there’s a school shooting, we shouldn’t pretend our hearts go out to the victim’s families. The real question on most Americans’ minds is whether the authorities will dare to destroy the perpetrator’s innocent firearm.”
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By Tomezine (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Bin_the_guns.png
